Me-163 Komet Rocket Plane 1947 USAF Wright Field Air Materiel Command

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Caotyred German footage of the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet (Comet), with English narration.

From Wright Field Air Materiel Command Pictorial Review #1

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163_Komet

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet was a German rocket-powered interceptor aircraft. Designed by Alexander Lippisch, it is the only rocket-powered fighter aircraft ever to have been operational and the first piloted aircraft of any type to exceed 1000 km/h (621 mph) in level flight. Its performance and aspects of its design were unprecedented. German test pilot Heini Dittmar in early July 1944 reached 1,130 km/h (700 mph), an unofficial flight airspeed record unmatched by turbojet-powered aircraft for almost a decade. Over 300 Komets were built, but the aircraft proved lackluster in its dedicated role as an interceptor and destroyed between 9 and 18 Allied aircraft against 10 losses. Aside from combat losses many pilots were killed during testing and training...

Work on the design started around 1937 under the aegis of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS)—the German Institute for the study of sailplane flight...

The designers planned to use the forthcoming Walter R-1-203 cold engine of 400 kg (880 lb) thrust, which... used a monopropellant consisting of stabilized HTP known by the name T-Stoff. Heinkel had also been working with Hellmuth Walter on his rocket engines... this was done in competition with Wernher von Braun's bi-propellant, alcohol/LOX-fed rocket motors...

The biggest concern about the design was the short flight time, which never met the projections made by Walter. With only seven and a half minutes of powered flight, the fighter truly was a dedicated point defense interceptor. To improve this, the Walter firm began developing two more advanced versions of the 509A rocket engine, the 509B and C, each with two separate combustion chambers of differing sizes, one above the other, for greater efficiency. The B-version possessed a main combustion chamber—usually termed in German as a Hauptofen on these dual-chamber subtypes—with an exterior shape much like that on the single chamber 509A version, with the C-version having a forward chamber shape of a more cylindrical nature, designed for a higher top thrust level of some 2,000 kg (4,410 lb) of thrust, while simultaneously dropping the use of the cubic-shape frame for the forward engine propellant flow/turbopump mechanisms as used by the earlier -A and -B versions.[34][35] The 509B and 509C rocket motors' main combustion chambers were supported by the thrust tube exactly as the 509A motor's single chamber had been. They were tuned for high power for takeoff and climb. The added, smaller volume lower chamber on the two later models, nicknamed the Marschofen with approximately 400 kg (880 lb) of thrust at its top performance level, was intended for more efficient, lower power cruise flight. These HWK 109–509B and C motors would improve endurance by as much as 50%. Two 163 Bs, models V6 and V18, were experimentally fitted with the lower-thrust B-version of the new twin-chamber engine (mandating twin combustion chamber pressure gauges on the instrument panel of any Komet equipped with them), a retractable tailwheel, and tested in spring 1944.

The main combustion chamber of the 509B engine used for the B V6 and V18 occupied the same location as the A-series' engine did, with the lower Marschofen cruise chamber housed within the retractable tailwheel's appropriately widened ventral tail fairing. On 6 July 1944, the Me 163B V18 (VA+SP), like the B V6 basically a standard production Me 163B airframe outfitted with the new, twin-chamber "cruiser" rocket motor with the aforementioned airframe modifications beneath the original rocket motor orifice to accept the extra combustion chamber, set a new unofficial world speed record of 1,130 km/h (702 mph), piloted by Heini Dittmar, and landed with almost all of the vertical rudder surface broken away from flutter. This record was not broken in terms of absolute speed until 6 November 1947 by Chuck Yeager in flight number 58 that was part of the Bell X-1 test program, with a 1,434 km/h (891 mph), or Mach 1.35 supersonic speed, recorded at an altitude of nearly 14,820 m (48,620 ft). However, it is unclear if Dittmar's flight achieved sufficient altitude for its speed to be considered supersonic, as the X-1 did...